SOCIAL REALITY ART CLUB

Dear Wally

We are finally responding to the last emails you sent.

Email 1.

On this email you mentioned three goals you have and ask us about our goals as curatorial team.

Here they are

Objectives for us as Piso Alto Curatorial Club

 

1. This must be a Curatorial Project
2. It must remain within the professional contemporary art field we are in, which also means we will use art terms.
3. For us Space and Graphic Design are essential

Having said that, let me explain what we mean.

You have set three primary goals. In general terms, we can perfectly follow them because they are the essence of the whole project.

In specific terms, i must say the following:

In relation to goal A.  Examples. The project will develop abundant, varied and clear examples, covering several social issues… We call this a Curatorial Program which means we will come up with artists names and activities that go along and involve the community (non artists).

In relation to goal B. Face to face and web connections. In artistic language, we would call this an Archive, which is a place, physical or virtual, where certain information is collected, organized and ready to be browsed and used.

In relation to goal C.  Expand contacts. We will like to find a way that is through the project itself. (We are already contacting artists for now) and not just an act of recruiting new members, i wouldnt want it to have that institutional feeling, even if the goals were that.

Now… in relation to our goals…

 

1. A curatorial project (program).

We are giving our knowledge to this project and we will need in return something that can be shown in our resumes as curators. In other words, you and i am not sure who else, will be part of the curatorial team along with the three of us, and essencially you will lead the WHAT part, and we will lead the HOW part. Of course there should be constant feedback between WHAT and HOW. I hope i am making myself clear.

 

2. It must remain within the professional contemporary art field.

This point is related to what I said above of running a project that makes sense, professionally speaking, for the Curatorial Club. I should explain that there is a thin line between working with community as an art project, and making the community results an artwork. We can show you examples of this.

 

3. For us Space and Graphic Design are essential.

What we mean is that we should design a strategy and language for visual communication as well as the tone of what we say. Having the primary goals clear it is important to us that graphic design, words used, and space design are coherent with the curatorial program to make it less institutional as it is right now. We have a graphic designer on our team, and even though he won’t be in Boston, we can count on him to design templates with the general tone, colors, fonts, textures, etc., we want to us.

In terms of space, you very well know that I am an architect and for me every exhibition or curatorial project must be impeccable in terms of space, which means it should respond to the idea at all times. So, it is not like a classroom where you clean up after each class, but rather a constant construction of the “space” in architectural terms.

Since the actual proposal is going to be built by the whole team once in Boston, we have only worked some basic ideas as a starting point.

I have drawn a graphic that explains very simply your goals and ideas, and then I built a similar graphic derived from yours using curatorial terms and that suggest a distribution of the space.

We have envisioned (in spacial and curatorial terms) some sort of space for social interaction where people can come in and develop several activities related to social issues as well as having art pieces.

I have contacted some artists already, at least to see if they are willing and available to participate… and while chatting with one of them, the artist told me something that I find very interesting, as a starting point.

I mentioned to him, that this is a curatorial project that is not planned ahead, that doesn’t involve previous research as it usually does, that doesn’t have art pieces that are transported from let’s say South America, an event that also has a very small budget, and that is intended to work 24/7 for 10 days.  He said that it seemed to him a reality show, not in a derogatory way, but in the sense that everything is going to be built on the spot, the art, the conversations, the interactions, everything. After talking about it for a while, we want to suggest a name for the event that alludes to the dynamics we want to happen:

 

Social Reality Art Club

This, has to do, not with a reality show at all, it has to do with social reality (which is our main goal) and a social club, which is a place to gather, to meet people, talk, interact, maybe dance and eat. All mediated by the arts.

I would like to keep this as a working title, for now, and we can discuss it later.

As a subtitle, we could keep: Arts for social and civic engagement

On another note, there is an art curator i admire very much, who builds curatorial projects without too many resources, and what he builds is very profound as well as very simple… http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com.co/search/label/PR04

He talks about something he calls the Economics of Friendship… http://www.malba.org.ar/pablo-leon-de-la-barra__manual-para-realizar-exposiciones-en-el-tropico/

which I find very appropriate for this, because it will be thanks to my and your friendship with artists in Boston, that this can happen.

Keep those two ideas in mind and we can build from there: Social reality art club and economics of friendship.

Following the idea of a social club… we would like to set up the space, divided (graphically, not literally) in several spaces that resemble a house or a social club, and the open studio you mentioned:  living room, a kitchen, a cafe, a studio, etc, that are just drawn onto the floor. Think of DogVille, the movie.

Adriana Rios – Club Curatorial Piso Alto